How Do You Add Value To Your (Potential) Fans’ Lives? So many indie artists struggle to break through with their music that we now have the following near-synonyms: Indie = broke Indie = hopeless Indie = unknown Indie = poor quality But as most of you know,...

Most of us think of music reviews as something one encounters in a music magazine, or perhaps on some of the music sites on the web. Many artists have an ambivalent attitude towards reviews in general. On the one hand, they recognize their need for them, but on the other hand they’re afraid that their song – or performance – might get slated and they’ll thus lose out.

The word “indie” as a blanket term for any kind of “independently produced music” has lost all its relevance – if indeed it had any to begin with. It’s not just that the distinction between production quality of the “majors” and the “indies” is getting increasingly blurry. And it’s not just that the majors have long ago hijacked the term and applied it to their version of edgy and slightly garage-band-sounding rock, thereby confusing everybody – except the real indies themselves. The real reason why the term “indie” is now more of a hindrance then a help to you the indie musician, is, ultimately, because the punters don’t know any different. For this reason alone, promoting your music as ‘indie’ is self-defeating.